"My First Week on the Job"

Author’s Note: I’ve listened to suggestions from people who think I should drop this chapter altogether or include parts of it in the introduction. Listen, it’s a free country and you’re perfectly free to skim it or skip it. I won’t be hurt either way. I put it here so you’d gain some background as to what a day in the life of a typical New York doorman is really like—and what really happened to me my first day on the job. So, if you actually want to have some context when I mention things later, pay attention.



In an odd sense, my circuitous journey to becoming a doorman goes all the way back to the early ’70s, when my parents and I lived in a Pre-war building on Central Park West that was a lot like the place where I later worked. Until my younger sister was born, we had a six-room, tenth-floor apartment overlooking the park, and to this day, I can honestly say that most of my memories of growing up there remain intact.
In particular, I vividly recall as a young boy being enthralled by Fernando, our weekday doorman who had come to America sometime in the 1950s after losing everything during the Cuban Revolution, and the rest of the staff, with whom I used to spend hours hanging out with and shooting the breeze in our building’s marble lobby. We also had this old manual elevator that José, the elevator man whom I kept in touch with over the years until he retired and moved back to Puerto Rico, used to let me drive. So enamored by their jobs was I that I even turned the toy policeman’s costume I
got one year for Christmas into a makeshift doorman’s uniform. Not only that, but once during a two-day doorman’s strike in 1976, I actually put it on and offered to fill in for them as our real doormen picketed outside for better wages and working conditions.
Of course, back then, this was all innocent child’s play. But it is something I have thought about often, especially when my tenants used to ask me about how and why I became a doorman, knowing that they were expecting to hear some hard-luck story, or that my father and grandfather had both worked as doormen and it was a generational thing in my family, even though nothing could be further from reality.
The real truth is that after moving out of our apartment on Central Park West in 1977, we moved to an even bigger place on Park Avenue and then left the city altogether in 1979. My parents, both native Southerners, moved my sister and me to Memphis for a more normal childhood when I was eight and she was three. My now retired father was a doctor as were both my grandfathers and my uncle, and after four years in Memphis we moved to Nashville in 1983 where my dad became chief of Neuropathology at Vanderbilt University Medical School. My mother did fundraising for a non-profit group for people with hearing disorders and eventually went into the antiques business with her best friends Connie and Sigourney.
At fifteen, I went away to prep school, first in Virginia, then Atlanta, finally winding up in Boston where I majored in journalism at Emerson College. After graduation, I returned to New York to become a writer and supported myself as a business reporter and through a random series of thanklessly humdrum public relations jobs throughout the dot-com era, eventually landing a lucrative gig spinning for a firm on

Wall Street.
When I got laid off one month before 9/11 because of a merger, I collected my unemployment benefits until they ran out, and eventually settled into a commercially successful but financially meager existence as a freelance entertainment writer covering movies, TV and stand-up comedy for the New York Post, the Daily News, The Hollywood Reporter and the L.A. Times.
I also published two books in the process, but hit a dry spell when neither of them earned back their advances and my agent found no takers for two other TV history projects he was trying to peddle because New York publishers weren’t buying them anymore. After that, I decided to switch over to writing about something other than pop culture and when my editor suggested doormen I jumped at the chance. That was a subject that had always fascinated me, but still I never thought about actually becoming one, until serendipitously, it just happened.

It must have been around eleven-thirty on the morning of Good Friday when I got the call on my cell phone. “Yeah … uh… Whetsell … this is Manny, the super over at the Wyckforde where you dropped off your résumé last week,” the raspy, Spanish-sounding voice on the other end barked. “I checked your references and I want you to be here the first thing Monday to train for the weekend four-to-midnight shift.”
Click.
Although I’d already worked briefly at a rental building near Sutton Place, the idea of being a summer relief doorman at the Wyckforde, an Art Deco Pre-war that was

just six doors down from where Jackie O used to live really pulled my chain, even if it
meant completely giving up my weekends. Over the years, I had passed by it a million times and even fantasized about one day becoming a bestselling author and living there. Like where I’d grown up on Central Park West and later Park Avenue, the Wyckforde gave the impression that its doormen were part of an elite fraternity in which only the top echelons of the profession could join. Hell, their uniforms had epaulets and
they even wore white gloves all year-round for Christ Sakes.
The fact that I’d actually been hired to work here seemed like the most important thing that had ever happened to me up until that point. I had arrived; I passed muster.
The first person I told was Sharon, my friend whose address I had listed as my own on the application. Next, I e-mailed my agent Peter, then called my family. Naturally, I assumed Mom, my sister and brother-in-law would get a kick out of my little ruse, which they did. My father’s reaction, however, was less than enthusiastic.
“Are you crazy,” he yelled. “What you’re doing is totally dishonest and if someone finds out you could be sued for libel.”
“No, I won’t because nobody’s ever going to find out,” I argued, rolling my eyes. Plus, it’s one of the great journalistic challenges of all time.”
Even as I tried to explain how I’d be getting paid $18 an hour, my ultra-
conservative, well-meaning dad was having none of it. And yet what could I do? I had already signed on for the job, and remembering what he had always told me about the importance of finishing what you started, I wasn’t about to back down.

That first week started out on a raw, rainy day in late April. Dressed in the same black suit I’d worn for my first book warming party, I showed up for work an hour early and went in through the service entrance since doormen are prohibited from coming in through the lobby. Sam, the daytime doorman where I really live who’s also the union shop steward, had lent me one of his ties and given me some pointers, so I felt prepared. After filling out a time card and inhaling my breakfast of burnt coffee and a stale doughnut from a street cart, I headed upstairs to train alongside Danny, a heavyset Italian guy about my age who’d already logged fifteen years on the job.
So began my fledgling doorman career, where for the next five days straight I worked from 8:00 to 4:00 p.m. as Danny dictated orders and slacked off while I absorbed bits of instruction along the way. Never give a real time for when something will be delivered or fixed. Address all residents by their last names even if they tell you
otherwise. And always tell them to have a nice day even if they don’t respond in kind.
The first couple of hours seemed to pass like days even though it was great people watching and I was busy learning the ropes—the whole enchilada of how to use the intercom, logging in the dry cleaning and packages, who the biggest assholes were, etc., etc.—and catering to the demands of the tenants who spilled out like human waves as my
mentor just stood there.
Paradoxically, of course, there’s was a life I knew like the back of my hand, though right now they all just seemed to blend together as if they had been handpicked by central casting. Old money Wasps and Jewish establishment, new money Wasps and Jews who had wanted to appear old money. Even a subset of non-assimilated outcasts of virtually every stripe (think Henry Kissinger meets David Lee Roth). Brahman versus Bling-bling, in other words, which is why in order to survive here you had to fight a daily collision course of Wall Street power brokers, sundry artist types, the elderly who could barely remember their own names and people still using sippy cups all in one fell swoop. Over time, this ritual became as predictable as a bad sitcom, tempting me, as if on cue, to either (A:) adjust the patent leather brim of my hat, or (B:) throw caution to the wind and yell, “Showtime!” No other event personified the job as perfectly while I was doing it, and it always began and ended in the same place: inside the tiny vestibule of the lobby’s main entrance during the morning rush.

My initial bright-eyed enthusiasm did not last. By ten o’clock on that first day, my medically diagnosed Attention Deficit Disorder was already starting to rear its ugly head,
I really had to go to the bathroom and my feet and lower back felt like they were on fire, none of which I could immediately attend to because my “break” was still more than three hours away. I’m exaggerating slightly here because you are allowed to use the bathroom when nature calls, though pervasive kidney problems, especially among older doormen are one of the biggest occupational hazards. But the whole break concept is basically a crock of shit because while you’re on duty you are forbidden to sit, drink, eat or read with the exception of one half-hour union-mandated meal break. Supers get to sit any place, any time they goddamn well please—which they do at every opportunity—but it’s their job to run roughshod over the worker bees, even when there’s absolutely nothing to do, and that’s why, for doormen, these breaks and the end of a shift is like getting paroled.
Even when you’re on a break, I’d be remiss not to point out also that you can’t leave the premises except to run down to the corner deli for food. And still then, at countless buildings like the Wyckforde, the staff is banished downstairs to the locker room. How to describe? This windowless room, which looks and smells like an oversized
gas station lavatory, is where doormen and porters stash their civilian clothes and go to relax. Only there’s almost never anything to relax on unless you count a couple of badly beaten up folding chairs and a long-discarded sofa that has exposed metal rods everywhere because half the stuffing is missing. Plus, depending on the time of year, the temperature in this shit hole in the very bowels of the building runs from either scorching to sub-zero and nearly everyone smokes to alleviate stress. On my first day, in fact, one of the porters was sucking down a Marlboro red dog in between trying to reheat his lunch and thumbing through the sports section of the Post. Atop an ancient microwave, a barely
audible Spanish hip-hop tune strained from the paint-scuffed, antenna-less Magnavox radio above which dangled a badly faded First Aid poster. Next to the bathroom was another handwritten missive that read: IF YOU CAN’T HIT THE BOWL, CLEAN IT UP, even though any visible signs of sanitary provisions—Lysol, soap, toilet paper, paper towels, etc.—were missing.
But even as I stood there looking at my smudged reflection through the cracked mirror over in the corner—as repulsed and wrung out as I already was—I knew I had no one else to blame. Not my dad, not even my editor and agent who had suggested I get a job as a doorman in the first place. None of them were holding a gun to my head. This was what I had volunteered for and where I wanted to be—at least until something interesting happened that I could use in my book.
The morning rush was already over by the time a quarter to eleven rolled around, but the lobby was still buzzing with the last of the tenants leaving for work and maids, nannies, contractors and food deliveries coming in and out. One of them was for Danny who was sitting on one of the couches and asked to borrow a twenty.
Trying to ingratiate myself, I lent it to him and stepped outside to get some air. When I leaned up against the awning pole to stretch my back, that’s when Manny the super sidled up against me and from out of nowhere said, “If I wanted to see a fucking pole dancer I’d go to Scores.” Just then, the president of the co-op board, a balding eighty-something man with a cane shuffled by as my boss reprimanded me to get back inside, then shoved a piece of crumpled paper at me and told me to go down to the
management office on East Forty-Second Street for a background check, and, as he so tactfully put it, to “take a piss test.” But there was never a please or thank you, just a directive. I felt like a kid in high school who had just been caught smoking in the boy’s bathroom as I muttered, “Yes sir,” trying to regain my composure. So much for working for a guy like my real super Joe whose recommendation had gotten me here in the first place, I thought to myself. With that, I limped over to Lexington Avenue, chugged down four Aleve and hopped on the Number 6.

Ah, my background check and drug test. Both are forever etched in my mind for one reason: panic. The very term “background check” still sends chills up my spine to this day—especially given what I was doing and how up until now I had somehow managed to buck the system. The drug test scared the living crap out of me, too, even though I’d never even smoked pot unless you counted the one time back in college when I took a toke at a frat party. Also, judging from the way my own doorman Sam had described it, the screening process, even if you passed the drug part, was still rigorous and I felt like I was signing on to become a member of the CIA. Accordingly, there were a lot of steps and they made you jump through hoops so that no one fell through the cracks.
Also, the term “management office” when it comes to describing the place where you go to be tested is a misnomer. For starters, it was nothing at all like the glitzy corporate behemoth I was expecting. Instead, it was filled with rickety filing
cabinets, stained industrial carpeting, an uninspired layout and surly, overworked
employees. And the truth is that most Manhattan residential management offices—especially the ones that serve as the face for many of the city’s ritziest buildings like the Wyckforde—are meant to look this way. They are intended to be cheap, makeshift hovels that provide one purpose—pushing papers not only for standard clerical work, but for granting permissions, issuing directives, waiving obligations, enforcing probations and so on and so forth.
I felt like I’d walked into the Department of Motor Vehicles on the Friday afternoon before a holiday weekend.
After an olive-skinned receptionist named Carmen buzzed me in through the double glass doors, she escorted me down the hallway to meet the Wyckforde’s managing agent, Denise, a morbidly obese woman in her late-forties who was simultaneously talking on the phone and eating a Big Mac in her cramped, paper strewn office. Clad in powder blue stretch pants and a floral print polyester blouse, small beads of sweat trickled down her forehead and she spoke in a thick Brooklyn accent.
When she finally got off the phone, she took a swill of her soda and began combing through my application trying to find flaws. The first thing she spotted was my
address, which was really Sharon’s. Then she proceeded to inform me that she was also the managing agent in Sharon’s building. And not only was she Sharon’s managing agent—she knew her. Four years earlier, there had been a lawsuit involving Sharon and one of her neighbors who had tried to have Sharon evicted because he claimed that her dog Max barked when she wasn’t home. The case was eventually thrown out of court when it was discovered that the barking was coming from the dog downstairs and a friend
of mine later wrote an article about it in the City section of the Times.
But when Denise bought the incident up, I nearly had a heart attack. “You must be thinking of someone else,” I said, convinced I’d blown it big time.
Except that somehow I managed to win her over, and so she dropped the subject, took another sip of her drink and then began grilling me with questions about why I was looking for work as a doorman. So I took a deep breath and spoke very slowly, as I tried to remember the speech I’d rehearsed: I was an unemployed actor from Atlanta who’d done a couple of small walk-ons on Law and Order, I’d had a recurring part playing a hospital orderly on All My Children and now I was saving up to go to NYU film school in the fall.
Sill seeming to buy into my story, she asked to see my photo ID, but there was another problem. Not only did it not have my real address, it had been expired since the previous March, so I apologized, quickly handing Denise my social security card and explaining that I had just moved in with Sharon a week earlier.
With that, she shot me a skeptical look and told me to wait while she waddled down the hall to make a copy of my paperwork as I tried to figure out what to do next,
whether it was making up more lies to cover my lies or come clean altogether. But when Denise returned about ten minutes later, all she did was wish me luck and then she said she hoped to see one of my movies someday. Then she handed me an index card and directed me to a dingy lab down on West-Fourth and Broadway that resembled an off-track betting office to take the drug test. And when that was done about an hour later, I
hopped back on the Number 6 and headed back uptown to finish out my shift.
By the time I got back to the Wyckforde, it must have been close to two-fifteen. With slightly less than two hours to go before I got off duty, Manny tapped me on the
shoulder again and informed me that I had passed the drug test and background check. But he didn’t say, “Welcome Aboard,” or “I’m glad you’re going to be here with us,” as I had expected. Instead, he dismissively told me to go find a uniform—an impossible task given that I had no idea where the hell to look, not to mention the fact that the only ones in my size were either riddled with moth holes or covered in mildew. He then ordered me back upstairs.
Then it came, the perfect storm. As I was getting out of the service elevator, I heard a scream from over in the corner. It was coming from Vida, the woman who took care of Dominique Devereux, a 98-year-old tenant in 8C who with six cats who hadn’t left her apartment in nearly five years. Vida was a plump and gangly woman in her mid-30s who wore dreadlocks and had a nose ring. I was immediately weary of her.
About twenty minutes earlier, she had discovered that Dominique who suffered from Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease wasn’t breathing, and so she ran downstairs to
summon help. Desperation gave way to an emergency plan as Danny instructed me to escort Vida back up to the apartment while he called an ambulance. Reluctantly, I complied even though the thought of seeing the corpse made me queasy. Meanwhile, Vida was sobbing uncontrollably and my hand shook as I put the passkey into the lock and turned the tumbler. Inside, the apartment smelled of ammonia and cat litter. In the living room was a wheelchair, two oxygen tanks and an unopened case of Ensure.
Aside from that, the apartment where Dominique, a former silent film actress had
lived since 1949, was a shrine to a life long ago lived—faded paint and peeling wallpaper with furniture and appliances from another era, old books and photos of dead relatives. There was a black rotary dial-up phone on top of the coffee table, as well as two signed framed photographs from Louis B. Mayer and Fiorello LaGuardia.
I slowly walked toward the bedroom and Vida followed. It was completely still except for two cats that were lying at opposite ends of the hospital bed. When I switched on the light, one of them lunged on top of the window sill and knocked over a canister of baby powder. I wasn’t sure what to do next, but when I bent down to pick it up I could see Vida running her fingers through Dominique’s white hair. Rigor mortis had already set in and Dominique’s drawn face was a grotesque mask, opaque purple with engorged blood, her tongue lolling around her toothless gums. She wore a stained, red flannel nightgown and clutched a teddy bear underneath her shriveled right arm. “She’s gone,” I said, pulling the top sheet over her head. Vida broke down again. Her bellow reverberated throughout the apartment and I held her hand until the paramedics arrived about a half-hour later.

Much of what happened next during my first week at the Wyckforde is lost in a haze of nerves and exhaustion. I received a softball-sized lump on my right shin helping a woman get out of a cab. I nearly pulled a muscle in my lower back carrying up another tenant’s air conditioner who didn’t tip me. And Manny read me the riot act because Eddie, the regular weekday four-to-midnight doorman was pissed off at Danny and had had purposely lost some important papers that a lawyer in 10D was expecting. Still, I got blamed because the person on duty always takes the rap even when it’s not his fault, and so I did what any good doorman in the know would do under such circumstances. I
pretended to play dumb and passed the buck. But these proved only to be the first tests of my endurance over the next year. I was now officially a New York doorman, indeed, only instead of getting better the job just got progressively worse.